


All the good luck of it

by Doorkeeper



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2018-07-11 10:49:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7045414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doorkeeper/pseuds/Doorkeeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charlotte has made her choice. Now she makes another one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the good luck of it

It will not be so very awful. Many women have it worse. He is clean, at least, he will have clean linens, he will not smell too dreadfully, except of that wretched hair oil. His breath is not foul. He is not a big man, no taller than I, so it will not hurt. Or perhaps it won’t hurt after the first time. He will not use me roughly. I cannot think he will want it to go on for very long.

***

Charlotte’s wedding night is awkward and clumsy, no more nor less than she had expected. He is perfunctory, she lies there stiff. She keeps on her nightgown, as does he. They do not kiss. To her relief, afterwards he gets up and excuses himself to go to his own bed in the dressing-room, as he thinks proper. To her dismay, he then smiles that awful obsequious smile, and wrings his hands, and bows, and _thanks_ her at tedious, unnecessary length, as if she had handed him an invitation to a luncheon, rather than having endured the indignity of his member pressing into her, his hot weight upon her. Still, once he is gone, she thinks, yes, she can do this. It is not so awful. It does not last long. She must have a son as soon as she possibly can. She scrubs the spots of blood on the sheet out in cold water, when morning comes.

***

To her surprise, even a short few months into sharing his home with someone he no longer has to impress seems to unlock something in her husband. What they find together, while nothing like true intimacy, is growing to have at least a small measure of ease. In company he is as ingratiating, as obsequious, as prideful and lecturing as ever, and she has to detach her feelings, smile, and tell herself she is not embarrassed either for herself or for him, she has made her choice. But in the quiet of their drawing-room, his face loses that anxious squint, his brow clears a little, and – mercy upon mercy – _he is occasionally silent_ from time to time. She finds she begins to mind him a little less than she once did.

In short, married life is …not distressing. She looks after the household, and encourages her husband’s interest in his garden, in his sermons, in his good works in the parish, and even in his devotion to Lady Catherine. Given permission by Charlotte to think of his work in the garden as a suitably godly pursuit, he throws himself into clearing weeds, planning beds, clipping and shaping the hedges, and the evenings when he returns indoors after a long day in the grounds, tired but satisfied, calm in a way she had rarely seen in him before, those are the evenings she likes best. She uses his labours in the garden as an excuse to trim his hair quite severely, and is glad to be no longer irritated by those ridiculous curls sticking to his pink forehead. She discovers how to talk to him so that he will listen, and how to bring a conversation with him to a decisive close, so that they both part contented. She has a routine, and long blissful days of mostly solitary purpose, of answering to nobody, and in the time they do spend with one another, she finds it easier and easier to summon the patience to endure with grace – and even to take pleasure in – the company of this man, her loquacious, complicated, most peculiar husband.

He comes to her bed but infrequently. After that first time, he is oddly shy and grave, and – thank goodness – never repeats his bows and speechifying of that first night. She vastly prefers him as this solemn-faced man, uncharacteristically quiet, who still doesn’t kiss her, but who at least also doesn’t smile like he wants to sell her something, or lecture her half to death afterwards. He fumbles into her bed in the dark, and he turns his face to the side, politely away from hers as he lies atop her. He has never used her roughly, has never even required that she remove her nightgown, and he takes himself silently away to his own room afterwards. It’s almost like he’s a different man, there in the dark. It’s nothing like romance, she still cannot conceive of why any woman would want this without the promise of children, but the feel of a man’s arms around her, even _this_ man’s, she can begin to imagine as a comfort, of sorts. She is so rarely touched by anyone at all. There in the dark, it’s almost nice, sometimes.

***

And then all of that growing ease is gone.

***

He is once again an obsequious, pompous prig – he ever was, in company, but now he is relentlessly so even when they are quite alone. He simpers, lectures, bores her to death without ever saying anything of substance, and smiles, smiles, smiles, with not one whit of genuine delight in his face. He is endlessly agitated, and nothing that previously worked to calm or distract him will work now. He alternately neglects the garden and punishes it, viciously ripping up the catmint he planted in the parterre only a month ago. He constantly dashes off to pay his respects to Lady Catherine, and comes home too early, wringing his hands. Charlotte is dismayed at her own folly in becoming complacent too soon, and dearly wishes she had never discovered a small measure of contentment, or the kinder, more interesting man she had begun to share her evenings with, only to have them both disappear when he was swapped back with this bullying, tedious stranger. She is not yet with child, and he no longer comes to her bed. She endures and endures, and thinks on her future with this ridiculous, impossible man for the next thirty, forty years, with no prospect of an heir, no hope of family or the security she longed for, and she tries not to scream.

***

She wakes to moonlight, and the certainly that someone else is in her room. William is perched on the side of her bed, wringing his hands as ever he does. She struggles upright, reaches out to still the endless movement of his hands, and he sobs, and clutches at her fingers, and brings them to his lips, kissing them again and again. The kisses slow, and his lips move down her hand until he is mouthing blindly at her wrist. His eyes are shut. He doesn’t smile. His lips and tongue continue to press on her wrist, and she can feel him shake. _Oh_ , she thinks, beginning to understand, and something starts to flutter, low in her stomach.

He gives her wrist one last clumsy kiss, and then there is nothing for him to do but straighten up and open his eyes. He does so, looks straight at her for once, and immediately begins to pull away, smiles that awful smile, begins to stammer flowery, ridiculous, mannered, meaningless apologies in too high and desperate a voice. _Shush_ , she murmurs, _shush_ , and miraculously, he does. That awful smile drops from his face. He calms. They sit for a moment, silently looking at one another. That solemn-faced man she had come to rather like is back, here in her room, so she makes a decision, a new one, and draws back the coverlet, and pulls him down into her bed. Eight months into her married life, she kisses someone for the very first time.

***

Neither knows what they are doing, but once Charlotte remarks to him that the celebration of married love is really a _duty_ for a good Christian couple, William feels able to try his best. A few nights in, greatly daring, he takes off his chemise before getting into her bed, and is tense with false bravado until she wriggles out of her own nightgown, too, and slides close. Not many days after that he forgets himself entirely during the act of love, and does not turn his face politely to the side. She lies underneath him, watching as his gaze roams over her face, as he looks into her eyes and stares helplessly at her mouth as he moves, and she shudders and melts under him, and she wonders how she managed without this, before. The night he puts his mouth on her breast for the first time, her convulsion of delight catches them both by surprise. He repeats the experiment, this time holding her tight. She writhes and gasps, and clutches him tightly back. He does not get up to leave, after, but sleeps there until morning.

***

He is still the difficult man he always was: ridiculous, prideful and vain. She still has to grit her teeth in company too often, still wishes he would pontificate a little less and listen a little more. But he was always a responsible man, and now he is a slightly more thoughtful, considerate one, too: a little calmer, a little less desperate to impress, and when he walks into a room it’s always her that his eyes seek first. And even in society she sometimes sees that quite new, small smile he has in private, one which is a reflection of his happiness rather than one which seeks to ingratiate. It looks surprisingly well on him.

She is content.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic came out of three things: my respect for Charlotte Lucas' survival skills; the discovery that David Bamber (who I consider the best and most convincingly awful Mr. Collins) can be surprisingly compelling-looking when he's not cringing and bobbing (see, for example, [here](http://upload.mediatly.com/card_pictures/1b/b7/83/1bb78336-811e-4d43-849a-93e695b0d562.jpg)); and thinking about how Mr. Collins would react if he fell in love, properly fell in love, with the woman he had married simply to provide himself with a convenient wife (to which I think the answer would be "very badly at first, and with absolute bafflement").


End file.
